Once again we started early (7am) this morning, glad that the anchor has not dragged during the night. Even with depth alarms set it would have been nasty. Left the shelter of the bay in a very manageable force 4 but with some concerns of what conditions would be like once we rounded the headland into the main channel between Evia and mainland Greece. Fortunately, the wind did not increase and we settled down to a steady 5.5 knots and comfortable conditions.

After a couple of hours and some miles behind us Simone and I had our first hint of optimism for a while. The further North we went the better conditions became and spurred on by our progress we decided to head straight for Khalkis rather than go for another overnight stop in between. By lunchtime, temperature was up by 10 degrees and the wind had dropped to Force 2. We had lunch on the go and kept moving, now delighted to be making progress and not having to worry about sea and wind condition.

By early afternoon we had reached the approach to Khalkis where we had to pass underneath a new road bridge before getting to the town itself. The ordeal of the past few days was quickly forgotten and the simple act of passing under a bridge in a yacht (first time for us) was cause for celebration.